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Topic: Internet Censorship In The UK ? (Read 1172 times)

Today saw yet another religously themed terror attack, many have been injured and some lost there lives, I am sure all peaceful folks are disgusted by such attrocites and will stand strong in the face of mindless violent activities, however this post is not about feeding the terrorists any further air of publicity it's more to share my concerns with you all in the aftermath of yesterdays London attack. Theresa May the Prime Minister of the UK has spoken of "shutting down parts of the internet ", this kind of talk has the potential to affect me directly unlike the terrorist attacks, it's also my view that to "jump" when such attacks take place rather than to remain strong and carry on as normal only makes the attackers more bold next time knowing that their activities are causing real change in our society, if we alter our behaviour or system of governance to suit the terrorist agenda we have lost.

I use an encrypted messenger service to talk to some of the staff here and I am more than concerned that such systems will be blocked or broken by the government simply because they want to be seen to be doing something, often after the event rather than prior, when such changes are put into effect its the normal peaceful folks whom are affected , a more than miniscule number of murderers are thus allowed to dictate the direction of the majority of the populance, does this sound like standing up for our way of life ?

I expect to see further news in relation to this subject but following on from Theresa's recent proclamations (some going back to september last year) and the recent law change slipped in I think we can be assured that we are soon going to be facing a chinese style internet within the UK using terrorist attacks as an excuse to curtail freedoms, I hope I am wrong but ever since she was home secretary and the authour of an infamous policy paper nicknamed by the press as "the snoopers charter" Theresa has had internet censorship on her mind, lets all work hard to ensure its effects are minimised and proportioate.

Prime Minister Theresa May has been warned that her promise to tighten regulation on tech firms after the London attacks will not work.Mrs May said areas of the internet must be closed because tech giants provided a "safe space" for terrorist ideology.But the Open Rights Group said social media firms were not the problem, while an expert in radicalisation branded her criticism "intellectually lazy".Twitter, Facebook and Google said they were working hard to fight extremism.

Google (which owns Youtube) Facebook (which owns WhatsApp) and Twitter were among tech companies already facing pressure to tackle extremist content - pressure that intensified on Sunday. Mrs May said: "We cannot allow this ideology the safe space it needs to breed. "Yet that is precisely what the internet, and the big companies... provide."

On ITV's Peston on Sunday, Home Secretary Amber Rudd said an international agreement was needed for social media companies to do more to stop radicalisation."One (requirement) is to make sure they do more to take down the material that is radicalising people," Mrs Rudd said."And secondly, to help work with us to limit the amount of end-to-end encryption that otherwise terrorists can use," she said.

But the Open Rights Group, which campaigns for privacy and free speech online, warned that politicians risked pushing terrorists' "vile networks" into the "darker corners of the web" by more regulation. "The internet and companies like Facebook are not the cause of hate and violence, but tools that can be abused. "While governments and companies should take sensible measures to stop abuse, attempts to control the internet is not the simple solution that Theresa May is claiming," Open Rights said.

Professor Peter Neumann, director of the International Centre For The Study Of Radicalisation at King's College London, was also critical of Mrs May.He wrote on Twitter: "Big social media platforms have cracked down on jihadist accounts, with result that most jihadists are now using end-to-end encrypted messenger platforms e.g. Telegram."This has not solved problem, just made it different... moreover, few people (are) radicalised exclusively online. Blaming social media platforms is politically convenient but intellectually lazy."

However, Dr Julia Rushchenko, a London-based research fellow at the Henry Jackson Centre for Radicalisation and Terrorism, told the BBC that Mrs May was right, and that more could be done by tech giants to root out such content.She felt that the companies erred on the side of privacy, not security. "We all know that social media companies have been a very helpful tool for hate preachers and for extremists," Dr Rushchenko said.

The online world had been a recruiting aid for foreign fighters, and social media needed "stricter monitoring", both by government agencies and by third party groups that have been created to flag up extremist content.However, the major social media firms said on Sunday that they were working hard to rid their networks of terrorist activity and support.

Facebook said: "Using a combination of technology and human review, we work aggressively to remove terrorist content from our platform as soon as we become aware of it - and if we become aware of an emergency involving imminent harm to someone's safety, we notify law enforcement."

Google said it was "committed to working in partnership with the government and NGOs to tackle these challenging and complex problems, and share the government's commitment to ensuring terrorists do not have a voice online".

It said it was already working on an "international forum to accelerate and strengthen our existing work in this area" and had invested hundreds of millions of pounds to fight abuse on its platforms.

Twitter said "terrorist content has no place on" its platform."We continue to expand the use of technology as part of a systematic approach to removing this type of content."We will never stop working to stay one step ahead and will continue to engage with our partners across industry, government, civil society and academia."

Analysis: Joe Lynam, BBC business correspondent

Calling for technology companies to "do more" has become one of the first responses by politicians after terror attacks in their country.

Theresa May's comments on that subject were not new - although the tone was.She has already proposed a levy on internet firms, as well as sanctions on firms for failing to remove illegal content, in the Conservative party manifesto published three weeks ago.

Given that 400 hours of videos are uploaded onto Youtube every minute, and that there are 2 billion active Facebook users, clamping down on sites which encourage or promote terror needs a lot of automatic detection - as well as the human eye and judgement.

As we've discussed a few times, Theresa May and her colleagues have been pushing to break real encryption as part of the party's manifesto. And they've used recent terrorist attacks as an excuse to ramp up that effort -- even though the perpetrators of recent attacks were already known to law enforcement and there's no evidence encryption played any role. Earlier in the year, Home Secretary Amber Rudd had insisted that encrypted communications were completely unacceptable, and specifically namechecked Whatsapp:

Theresa May's own party has been trying to figure out what the hell they're going to do. And, of course, the way they're communicating with each other is with the encrypted Whatsapp software that Amber Rudd was trashing just months ago:

Former minister Ed Vaizey told the BBC that he supports May staying on, but that Tories were discussing possible replacements. Asked whether members were calling one another to plot May’s ouster this weekend, he denied it.b “That’s so 20th century,” he said. “It’s all on WhatsApp.”

It seems they appreciate the privacy of encrypted messenger systems for their own purposes but wish the public to leave their doors open to criminals and worse.

Theresa May and her colleagues have been pushing to break real encryption as part of the party's manifesto.

so what about medical records/prescriptions, credit/debit/savings info, personal info that identity thieves love?...... is that going to be sent plain text? we dont want anything encrypted after all...

btw Theresa, encryption is just math... plan on banning pen paper and counting on fingers? oh and of course those notorious pocket calculators... they do math quickly so we have to ban those too....

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im actually quite curious about TLS/SSL ... if i bought something online from the UK with my credit card is it actually going to be secure?

She loves to talk but the reality is she is beyond incompetent. Her saying they wanna ban encryption is like saying they wanna ban water. It just ain't gonna happen. That doesn't mean we shouldn't stay vigilant and fight all instances of this, it just means don't get too worried.

Hell she might not even be Prime Minister in a few days if they can't sort out this shit with the DUP.

Neither, this one is focused on short term narrow aims and is very apathetic, not a people person, more a back door leader who enjoys the "across the spring water laden table" and out of the public eye kind of dealing, rather than having to soil her hands with meeting the public, we are simply an inconvenience I feel.